Thursday, June 28, 2007

Everyone's always saying how tough it is for professional sports people to reach "the top". I reckon they have it easy. In her recent Wimbeldon loss to Serena Williams, Alicia Molik scored 48% on first serves (or 48% of something, anyway, I don't understand tennis). imagine if in the course of your work day, you only got it right 48% of the time. You wouldn't get an Uncle Toby's ad contract, you'd be sacked. One thing's for sure, I'm never going to any doctor who used to be a professional sports person. I rather fear what they'd consider to be an acceptable rate of medical negligence.

I read somewhere that if the current growth in the number of Elvis impersonators continues, by 2019 a third of the Earth's population will be Elvis impersonators. Just think about that for a minute. Imagine going to the supermarket, and every third person you pass being an Elvis impersonator. Think of attending a meeting with 100 colleagues, 33 of whom respond to everything the manager says with "Uh-huh-huh". I can see a future where a third of humanity are Elvis impersonators, and the normal two-thirds of us are too creeped out to leave the house.

You might have heard or seen that when the homophobic brigade pickets churches and so on, a favourite chant of theirs is "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!", referring you the "fact" that God created a man and a woman, not two men, to be each others' life partner, and therefore homosexuality is an affront to God. Well, maybe they have a point...if you also consider that it's "Adam and Eve", not "Adam, Eve, Adam Jnr and Little Evie". God didn't create any children! Where are the protestors saying children are an affront to God?

Now that Paris Hilton has been released from jail, apparently her people are in negotiations to produce a biopic...starring Lindsay Lohan as Paris.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Watching the news this week, I came across the story reporting that Australia's labour regime is one of the worst in the world. Hearing this, I thought oh come on. Okay, the Howard government IR changes have caused a lot of suffering, but surely there have to be at least 25 countries worse than us? (I can't imagine being a 10 year old working in an Indian rug factory is much fun, and even my experiences in retail can't be as bad as earning 14c an hour making Nike apparel in Indonesia). However, there was a viewer poll asking whether people agreed that Australia was one of the 25 worst Labour regimes, and a significant minority voted yes.

Sadly, I had to wonder, did everyone who voted know precisely what they were voting for? Perhaps some thought they were voting not on our labour regime, but on the Labor regime, i.e. whether we have one of the worst Labor parties. (Even thinking being in Opposition is, somehow, a regime).

You may not think this is possible, and neither did I, until I heard a story which, had it not come from an unimpeachable source, I would scarcely have believed. Apparently an acquaintance of mine went to the polls at the recent NSW State Election believing it was the Federal Election, and believing that Morris Iemma was the man who brought in the new IR laws, so she voted against him.

Multiply this by all the not-quite-with-it people you know, and the scary possiblity emerges that the entire future of our country rests in the hands of tens of thousands of confused people, who don't quite know who or what they are voting for. And what can the leading political parties do to win the Confused vote? Not much, considering it will no doubt be completely scrambled in their addled little brains between hearing the policy announcements and the time they get to the voting booth (provided, that is, they've worked out what the date is).